Schoeman claims WTS Abu Dhabi

Schoeman claims WTS Abu Dhabi

Some rain in the land of sand provided some exciting racing in the WTS season opener.

Some 55 men dived into the water at WTS Abu Dhabi with unusual weather for that part of the world doing the rounds. The air – and water temperature was 20 and 23 degrees Celsius respectively.

Together with a very technical bike route on an oily race track and some wet conditions, the bike course proved to be the downfall of many athletes, but also the rise to glory of others.

Schoeman showed some early season form exiting the swim and T1 in the lead. He was part of a six man break away on the bike carefully negotiating the corners and turns before he broke away late on the second lap.

While the other athletes was visibly struggling in the wet conditions and Jonathan Brownlee going down all on his own, Schoeman kept increasing the gap to the chasers each lap.

With one lap to go, he had a 20 sec gap to the chasers and entered T2 5 sec clear of the chasers but 18 sec clear of the great runners.

Schoeman held his own on the run and broke the finish line 5 sec clear of Mola in second with Luis taking third. Schoeman is only the 2nd guy in history of WTS to lead swim/bike/run.

After a bad swim, Murray was 1 min down heading into T2. With his signature strength on the run, Murray ran through the field to finish in 10th place.

The next big race for our athletes will be the Common Wealth Games early April 2018.